‘You said you needed food.’

‘Even more so now. That last attack was severe.’

‘Aren’t you firing at all?’

‘No. We have surrendered, I remind you. Besides, we must not stop. Some of us at least will reach the Border.’

‘Border?’ said Johnny. ‘I thought you were going to a planet.’

‘We must cross the Border first. Beyond the Border, we are safe. Even you cannot follow us. If we fight, all of us die. If we run, some of us live.’

‘I don’t think humans can think like that,’ said Johnny. He glanced out of the cockpit. The tankers were getting nearer.

‘You are mammals. Fast. Hot-blooded. We are amphibians. Cold-blooded. Slow. Logical. Some of us will get across. We breed fast. To us, it makes sense. To me, it makes sense.’

The Captain’s image moved to a corner of the screen. Wobbler, Bigmac and Yo-less appeared in the other three quarters.

‘That was brilliant shooting,’ said Bigmac. ‘When I’m in the army—’

‘There’s a frog on my screen,’ said Wobbler.

‘It’s . . . she’s the Captain,’ said Johnny.

‘A woman in charge?’ said Yo-less.

‘No wonder the aliens always lose,’ said Wobbler. ‘You should see the side of my mum’s car.’

‘Um. She can hear you, I think. Don’t use sexist language,’ said Johnny

The Captain smiled.

‘I invite your comrades to unload their welcome cargoes,’ she said.

They found out how to do it, eventually. The whole of the middle of the tankers came away as one unit. Small ScreeWee ships, not much more than a seat and a pilot’s bubble and a motor, nudged them into the holds of the biggest ships. Without them, the tankers were just a cockpit and engine and a big empty network of girders.

Johnny watched the tank from Yo-less’s ship drift gently through the hatch of the Captain’s ship.

‘Er . . . if when you, you know . . . you’re pouring them out of the packet,’ he said, ‘and you sort of find something plastic falls into your bowl . . . well, it’s just a joke. It’s not on purpose.’

‘Thank you.’

‘If you save all the box tops you could probably win a Ford Sierra,’ said Yo-less. There was a slight tremble in his voice as he tried to sound like someone who talked to aliens every day. ‘You could get your photo in Competitor’s Journal,’ he added.

‘That would be very useful. Some of the corridors in this ship are very long.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Bigmac. ‘He’d – she’d never get the spares.’

‘Really? In that case we shall have to go for the six thousand sets of saucepans,’ said the Captain.

‘How do we get back?’ said Wobbler.

‘How did you get here?’

Wobbler frowned.

‘How did we get here?’ he said. ‘One minute I was . . . was . . . and then here I was. Here we were.’

‘Come to that, where did all the milk and burgers come from?’ said Bigmac.